


Indelible

by vix_spes



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Allusion to drug abuse, Episode Related, Established Relationship, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vix_spes/pseuds/vix_spes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the first year behind him, Reid needs something more tangible than the chip..</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indelible

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to the fabulous [freakingdork](http://freakingdork.livejournal.com) who edited this for me. Set after 2x15 'Revelations'

Somehow, and he's not completely sure how he does it, he makes it to the year, a whole year without Dilaudid. Though he knew that the fact that he had managed to get so far was a testament to his own strength of will, he was also under no illusions - it was unlikely that he would have made it without his support system, without his family. They had stood by him regardless of how awful he'd been to them, with Morgan and Emily taking the brunt of it all. He'd had John as well when he went to the Beltway Cops meetings. He couldn't comprehend how other people did it without a strong support network and system. That wasn't to say that he had been willing to ask for help and support from his friends and co-workers at any point during at least the first six months.

  
As much as he loved and cared for his team, as much as he trusted them with his life, he couldn't bring himself to trust them with this. Not even Morgan, especially not Morgan. He was so used to being independent, to taking care of himself that asking for help was a completely alien concept to him. Even when he wanted to ask for help, he just didn't know how to. He knew that he was being horrible to his co-workers, snapping and being moody, but he was caught in a catch-22 situation. He had spent so much of his childhood on the outskirts of everything, always alone, and then Gideon hand picked him from Caltech and mentored him through the FBI Academy before he'd entered the BAU and finally found a family. He was both terrified of confiding in them and running the risk of them walking away and leaving him alone but then equally he was terrified of slipping up, them finding out and leaving him anyway. The crux came when he found himself completely losing his temper with Morgan in the middle of the bull-pen before bursting into tears and leaving the room. He'd run for the bathroom, ultimate cliché that it was but it was likely to be the most secluded place in the busy FBI headquarters in Quantico. He also found it rather ironic that he was going to end up telling Morgan everything in a place where he had shot up before. He had simply blurted the whole truth out to Morgan. The one person that he was desperate not to lose. He had already lost a father figure in Gideon, he couldn't lose Morgan as well.

  
The response he'd received had surprised him. He had, in his head, come up with a hundred different ways that Morgan would react to the information, a hundred different ways in which he would be rejected. Morgan's reaction couldn't have been further from what he had imagined. The older agent stepped towards him and automatically Spencer flinched backwards, a habit stemming from years of bullying and a severe dislike of being touched, a habit that had never been a problem where Morgan was concerned. Even before they had become a couple, the casual touches that Morgan had frequently bestowed upon him from his arrival at the BAU had never bothered him in the slightest and he had easily accepted the hands that slapped him on the back and ruffled his hair, the arm that was frequently slung over his shoulder. He just couldn't understand what had changed, why he flinched now.

  
It was just that initial flinch though. When strong arms surrounded him and pulled him in closer, he had just sagged against Morgan's chest, completely wrung out. Trying to conceal a habit would be difficult in any close-knit family; when your close family were some of the FBI's top profilers it was even harder. He was completely and utterly emotionally and physically exhausted, a result of the addiction to Dilaudid, trying to keep it from his team and the stresses of the job. As alien a concept as it was for him, although he had got a lot better where Morgan was concerned since their relationship had developed from co-workers and close friends to lovers, he let Morgan take over and make the decisions. That had turned out to be the best decisions he made.

  
Morgan had taken control of everything. He had insisted that Spencer move into his place in order to keep an eye on him and had taken the opportunity to remove all traces of Dilaudid and anything that could be used to inject it. Morgan had been there through everything; the nightmares, all of the times that he had woken up screaming, the cold sweats, the times that he had physically had to stop Spencer from leaving the house to try and buy more Dilaudid. He had been the one to convince Spencer to eat rather than simply living on coffee and had lost more than a few hours of sleep keeping Spencer company when he had been plagued by a combination of insomnia and nightmares. It had been him who had discovered the Beltway cops and had actually driven Spencer there, even going so far as to sit in the SUV and wait for the duration of the meeting to ensure that Spencer actually stayed there through an entire meeting, despite not having any control of whether he participated or not. This had continued until Spencer was confident that he could trust himself that he could take himself to the meetings.

  
Most relationships would crumble under the huge amount of pressure of everything they had endured, particularly Spencer, as a result of their line of work. Then again, theirs wasn't your typical relationship and that was perhaps why they their relationship had managed to survive everything that had been thrown at it. If anything, their relationship had strengthened as a result of everything. There was an unspoken rule amongst the team that they didn't profile each other, but that wasn't always possible because it was so engrained in them. Because of that, when they had first embarked upon a sexual/romantic relationship, they had come to the agreement that they had to talk to each other and not hide things. Once Spencer had admitted his addiction to Dilaudid, that's exactly what they had done. They had talked. Well, they had once Morgan had overcome the fact that Spencer had lied to him and hidden his Dilaudid usage. As a result of the talking and the fact that they both worked and lived together, their relationship had survived and, against the odds, had become even deeper.

  
Despite his talent with words and the sheer number of words that he knows, there are no words that he can find or think of to express the relief and gratitude he feels that Morgan stands by him and doesn't simply abandon him. He doesn't know what he would have done if the older agent had done that. Regardless of how much he trusts and loves the rest of the team, he's still always kept them at a distance with the exception of Morgan . He's never been able to shake the terror that one day he's going to turn around and they'll all have abandoned him. After all, both Gideon and Elle have already done that and he had trusted them, not to mention his father and he doesn't quite know how to quantify his mom. Logically, he knows that it isn't her fault and that she did her best for him, that it was him who had no choice but to have her committed to Bennington, but there is still a slight taint of residual bitterness directed towards her no matter how much he loves her and no matter how illogical he knows it is. He knows that he has abandonment issues that run deep, but then given his history, that isn't at all surprising, so the fact that Morgan doesn't run away screaming means a hell of a lot. What also means a lot is the surprise that Morgan puts together on the first anniversary of him kicking the Dilaudid. They didn't go to restaurants all that often; they could both cook and, if they couldn't be bothered, they would simply order take-out. They were out of state on cases more often than not and by the time they returned, they were normally so exhausted that all they wanted was to go home, eat, and collapse into bed. So, the fact that Morgan had chosen a restaurant that they had ordered take-out from plenty of times before made things more special. There was another reason why they didn't eat out much which was the whole issue regarding fraternisation. Their relationship was kind of an open secret among their team (the downside of being profilers); everybody knew that they were together but nobody acknowledged it. The fact that they were having dinner together out in public, a dinner that was obviously romantic in nature given the candles on the table, was a risk in itself. Morgan's home, and the restaurant he had chosen, were both rather close to Quantico and so the possibility that they could run into someone who could let the truth slip was high. He'd raised his concerns with Morgan only to be told that the other man didn't care. If they were found out, then they were found out; their relationship hadn't proved to be problematic in the field, so there shouldn't be any issues. It had been the conviction in Morgan's tone, the easy way that he had dismissed the risk, that had laid to rest some of his insecurities and enabled him to sit back, relax, enjoy dinner, and celebrate with his lover.

  
What he did discover was that he needed something tangible to prove to himself that he's managed a whole year without Dilaudid. It doesn't mean he hasn't had any cravings, but that he's managed to ignore them, regardless of how difficult it has been at times. He gave John his chip back and once he'd done that, he found that he needed something to remind him. It didn't necessarily need to be something physical, something that he could hold, but he needed something to remind himself that he did it.

  
The idea came to him after a particularly brutal case. They'd been dealing with abducted children and when their bodies had turned up, had shown signs of serious sexual assault. It had been particularly hard on all of them, cases involving children always did, but Morgan always took them especially hard, particularly when they were unable to save the children. This time they had been lucky; they had figured it out in time, but still, they had all found this case particularly hard and were all exhausted. They'd gone straight back to Morgan's from the air-strip, only stopping to collect some Chinese and barely stopping to eat before tumbling into bed. It had been later, lying naked under the sheets next to an equally naked Morgan with his fingers stroking over the tattoo on Morgan's shoulder that he had come up with the idea. The perfect proof that he had made it through a year clean.

  
A tattoo.

  
It wasn't something that he would normally have considered. It had never occurred to him to get one, he'd never had a particular interest in them for himself. He did love Morgan's though. A tattoo would be a constant reminder of what he had achieved, permanently displayed on his skin. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He could design it himself, so it would be exactly what he wanted and it wasn't as though he could ever lose it, like he could have done with the chip. As the ideas coalesced in his mind, he couldn't help but wonder how Morgan would react to him getting a tattoo. He obviously didn't have a problem with the general concept of tattoos, given the number of his own that he had, but there was a difference between tattoos of his own and Spencer having a tattoo. Then again, Morgan had the body to pull off tattoos and he didn't; he was under no illusions there. He didn't have to get one where it could be seen by other people though. In fact, he quite liked the idea of having a tattoo where the only people who knew that it was there were the two of them. Now that the idea had struck, he couldn't get it out of his head and he knew that he would end up researching it and, no doubt, inevitably going through with it. He would have to be careful though; he didn't want Morgan to get a hint of this before he had a chance to carry out his plans.

  
Six weeks later, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and traced his fingers gently over the black ink of the design that had been etched into the skin just above his left hipbone. It had taken him two weeks to do all the necessary reading and research he had wanted to do as well as come up with a design. He had then taken the opportunity to get the actual tattoo done while Morgan was away on a consultation. The timing had been perfect from then on. After that consult, they had had cases out of state for almost a month straight, something that was unusual but that did happen occasionally so not completely unheard of. Half the time they had been away they had been in single rooms and other times, they had been so exhausted that they had simply fallen into bed and just slept. He knew that it was ridiculous but he didn't want Morgan to see it until it was perfect, until it was completely healed. Until now.

  
His tattoo had finally healed and healed perfectly. In fact, he couldn't be happier with the end result. It was simple but effective and accomplished exactly what he had wanted it to. Maybe a square inch at the most, it was simply done in grey scale; the date that commemorated the year since he had given up the Dilaudid, set upon a pair of wings. Some people in the tattoo parlour, in fact one of the female tattoo artists, had commented that they looked like angel wings. He was more than aware of the irony considering that one of Tobias Hankel's other personalities was Raphael. If you looked closer, then perhaps it wasn't ironic at all. He had done an awful lot of reading into the significance of tattoos and the meaning of behind various things and had noted with interest the fact that Raphael was the patron saint of healing and of mental illness in particular but also that he was listed as a guardian angel. As for the wings themselves, he was struck by one text in particular that referred to wings as being a symbol of being able to break free of a destructive path and get away. It had just felt right.

  
What was even better was the way that he felt when large calloused fingers stroked gently over the inked flesh, the paths they traced followed by lips and tongue. Even though he had loved the tattoo for what it signified, he loved it even more when he saw Morgan's reaction to it. From the minute he had seen it, he hadn't been able to take his attention off it, whether it was tracing it with his fingers and lips or just simply staring at it. The amount of attention that he had received had almost overwhelmed him; he simply hadn't been prepared for it. Even four weeks after it had been done, the inked skin was incredibly sensitive, particularly as the only time it had been touched until today had been for cleaning, and every single touched seemed to be sending currents through his skin.

  
The best thing, was the fact that he hadn't had to explain anything to Morgan. He had immediately understood the significance of the black ink and that had meant everything to Spencer. Had meant that he just _got_ Spencer. His eidetic memory meant that he would never be able to erase the memories of Tobias Hankel and what that man had done to him, but that fact was tempered by memories such as those of tonight and a hundred other different encounters with Morgan that were equally burned into his brain. Unforgettable conversations, sensations and feelings marked into his mind as indelibly as the design inked into his skin.


End file.
